Bi-Weekly "Metapolitics" Discussion in Fishtown

Details

In preparation for the UPenn conference on Sat., Nov. 5th where 4 speakers will advocate FOR open borders, this discussion will focus on the case AGAINST open borders. Several of the "usual suspects" we regularly feature in this meetup - Scott Alexander, Sam Harris, Ron Unz, Nicholas Nassim Taleb - have weighed in on this issue recently and opposed open borders, so I've linked some articles by them on the subject. Two of our regular members, Chaim and Rob, suggested taking a look at Ross Douthat & David Frum as well.

Note that because "open borders" is an extreme position (i.e. complete freedom of movement across national borders & unlimited immigration), opposition to open borders need not mean a person is "anti-immigration" in the sense of advocating for "closed borders" and no immigration to the US. There's a considerable grey area with several distinct intermediate positions. Most of the thinkers we'll look at in this discussion are in favor of less red tape in the immigration process for high-skilled immigrants, and many also advocate helping refugees & asylum seekers fleeing wars & persecution. However, all of them advocate some type of controls on the annual number of immigrants to the US to prevent social services from being overwhelmed, as well as a vetting process to weed out criminals & terrorists. Some of them go a bit further and would like to see the number of low-skilled economic migrants limited to prevent blue collar wages from being driven down, and others advocate barring not just criminals & terrorists but also immigrants whose cultural & political values are incompatible with certain values they cherish, such as secularism, women's rights, gay rights, free market capitalism, and/or liberal democracy.

In terms of the reading, I quickly noticed that there's many potential arguments against open borders, but they're scatted across many different articles that no one can be expected to read in a timely manner. I've collected some of the better articles and broke them out into a bibliography for this discussion, and when I cite arguments from them I'll include the number of the essay in the bibliography.

https://www.meetup.com/Philadelphia-Political-Agnostics/messages/boards/thread/50247423/#129751911

In the interest of quickly & efficiently covering all of the major arguments against open borders, I've found that the Open Borders website does a fairly good job of summarizing these arguments succinctly without turning them into strawmen. Therefore, I suggest the best course of action is for our members to read the section below on moral foundations, and then skim the links I've provided from the Open Borders site that gives a short description of each objection to open borders. I'll include some notes referring to articles in the bibliography indicating which authors agree with the various anti-open borders arguments.

I. MORAL FOUNDATIONS & A QUICK REVIEW OF OUR PAST DISCUSSION ON NATIONALISM VS. GLOBALISM:

Vipul Naik, "The Moral Foundations of Immigration Restriction"

http://openborders.info/blog/the-moral-foundations-of-immigration-restrictionism/

Ad Hominem Attacks on Open Borders Advocates

http://openborders.info/ideological-blindness-and-stupidity/

http://openborders.info/self-interest-accusations/

The Vipul Naik essay breaks down the moral foundations behind the immigration debate very well, and the list of ad hominem attacks on open borders advocates gives us a good idea of how these discussions often short-circuit.

Scott Alexander points out the ad hominem attacks that some open borders advocates make against anyone who dissents - calling them "racists" and "xenophobes" - which often ends up turning off people who would otherwise be in favor of immigration reform that allowed more immigration but fell short of completely open borders. (3)

Another thing that's pertinent to the moral foundations angle is a discussion we had back on August 20th about the growing international political conflict between globalist elites and nativist populists. You don't have to go back & review all of the essays from that meetup, because luckily I created a "Cliff Notes" summary of the articles here. Check out the second half of those notes that deals with Jonathan Haidt's essay, "When and Why Nationalism Beats Globalism" and the 6 articles that responded to it:

https://www.meetup.com/Philadelphia-Political-Agnostics/messages/boards/thread/50074694

II. MORAL/PHILOSOPHICAL CASE AGAINST OPEN BORDERS:

http://openborders.info/citizenism/

http://openborders.info/territorialism/

http://openborders.info/local-inequality-aversion/

http://openborders.info/nation-as-family/

http://openborders.info/state-responsibility-thesis/

http://openborders.info/killing-versus-letting-die/

http://openborders.info/collective-property-rights/

http://openborders.info/anarcho-capitalist-counterfactual/

http://openborders.info/citizen-preference-for-reduced-immigration/

III. UTILITARIAN APPROACH TO IMMIGRATION AND THE UTILITARIAN CASE AGAINST OPEN BORDERS:

A. SIMPLISTIC UTILITARIAN NATURE OF "AGGREGATE WELFARE" & "RATIONAL CHOICE" AND THE LEFTWARD IDEOLOGICAL BIAS IN EXPERT CONSENSUS

Open Borders cites the expert consensus in favor of more immigration, but notes that only a minority of scholars favor completely open borders:

http://openborders.info/economist-consensus/

http://openborders.info/legal-and-political-scholarly-consensus/

They also note that several critics of high immigration think that economists have an overreliance on theory that misses the real-world damage that doesn't fit into their models:

http://openborders.info/economist-blind-spot/

One common complaint is that economists tend to focus too much on
"net/aggregate welfare" and lose site of the fact that individual Americans don't experience life as a statistical average but rather in terms of local conditions that can vary considerably. If many employers benefit from having a cheap labor supply provided by a large number of immigrants, this doesn't help a native-born, blue collar worker. In fact, it might depress their wages and they may see the ethnic & cultural character of their neighborhood change rapidly and its social capital erode.

Economic models based on "rational choice theory" might predict that native blue collar workers displaced by immigrants will simply move to a new area and/or retrain to learn new job skills.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_choice_theory#Criticism

However, as you may remember from our discussion of "punctuated equilibrium" at the last meetup, social conditions generally change only incrementally due to several restraints, such as the "stickiness" of local cultures, economic incentives, demographic trends, and the "bounded rationality" of individual decision-makers. A displaced native worker may not have the money or time & energy to relocate, they may not have the requisite abilities to learn new technical skills for which there is market demand, they may be too old for new employers to consider hiring them, they may be unwilling to leave their extended family & friends, they may be tied down by shared child custody arrangements, etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retraining

We'll discuss the University of Chicago's IGM Experts Panel next month, but for now take a quick peak at their polls. You'll see that top economists in the US are very confident that high-skilled immigrants are a net positive for our economy, but with low-skilled immigrants they think that the net positive effect is less strong and that there's a substantial negative effect on the wages of native-born workers in the low-skill category.

IGM Experts Panel: High-Skilled Immigrants to the US

http://www.igmchicago.org/igm-economic-experts-panel/poll-results?SurveyID=SV_0JtSLKwzqNSfrAF

IGM Experts Panel: Low-Skilled Immigrants to the US http://www.igmchicago.org/igm-economic-experts-panel/poll-results?SurveyID=SV_5vuNnqkBeAMAfHv

One common critique of the economic consensus (which we'll deal with in more detail in a future discussion), is the ideological imbalance. Although the professional economists tend to be somewhat more "conservative" (at least in the fiscal sense) than many other academics, a recent study has shown that the economics profession still has a Democrat to Republican ratio of 3:1.

http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2012/07/igm_and_economi.html

There's no readily available polls of lawyers on immigration, but the pro-immigration consensus among immigration lawyers that Open Borders cites is somewhat undermined by the legal field's heavy ideological slant toward the left, as well as the vested interest they have in higher levels of immigration which would increase their caseloads:

http://abovethelaw.com/2015/09/the-mostly-liberal-political-ideologies-of-american-lawyers-law-schools-and-firms/

Although Open Borders doesn't cite a sociological consensus on immigration, they do cite the sociologist Fabio Rojas as an advocate of open borders:

http://openborders.info/blog/open-borders-what-to-do-about-it-part-1/

Unfortunately, there's a similar ideological imbalance among sociologists in the US, with only 12 out of 6000 identifying as conservatives, which would make it difficult to be confident in their consensus even if we could find it:

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/joe-setyon/progressive-university-out-6000-sociologists-only-12-are-conservatives

B. UTILITARIAN ARGUMENTS: ECONOMIC PROBLEMS

http://openborders.info/native-wages-down/

http://openborders.info/welfare-objection/

http://openborders.info/second-order-welfare-objection/

http://openborders.info/skills-mismatch/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remittance#Potential_security_concerns

C. UTILITARIAN ARGUMENTS: SOCIAL PROBLEMS, CULTURE CLASH & LACK OF ASSIMILATION

http://openborders.info/crime/

http://openborders.info/terrorism/

http://openborders.info/dysfunctional-immigrant-culture/

http://openborders.info/linguistic-assimilation/

http://openborders.info/emotional-assimilation-and-patriotism/

D. UTILITARIAN ARGUMENTS: POLITICAL PROBLEMS

http://openborders.info/political-externalities/

http://openborders.info/foreign-control-and-loss-of-sovereignty/immigrant-suffrage/

http://openborders.info/nativist-backlash/

A broader discussion of the "nativist backlash" thesis is the idea that high levels of immigration feed into political polarization. Back in our discussion on Aug. 20th, We discussed the potential political conflict in the near-future US between a "liberaltarian" party ruled urban elites & low-wage minorities propped up by welfare programs and a "populiberal" party of suburban & rural nativists who rely on middle-class social insurance programs. You can refer to the "Cliff Notes" summary of the articles - just look at the notes that deal with Michael Lind's essay, "This Is What The Future of Politics Looks Like" (you can mostly ignore the notes on the response articles below it):

https://www.meetup.com/Philadelphia-Political-Agnostics/messages/boards/thread/50074694

Kelly Greenhill has written about the use of "strategic engineered migration" where nation-states or non-state actors create refugee crises for propaganda value, essentially turning refugees into moving "human shields", and also to create social & economic turmoil in host countries. (19) There's been some allegations that either the US or Russia or Middle Eastern states are using the Syrian refugee crisis in this way. (20)

E. UTILITARIAN ARGUMENTS: OVERPOPULATION, DISEASE & ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS

http://openborders.info/overpopulation-and-environment/

http://openborders.info/disease/

http://openborders.info/increased-footprint/

http://openborders.info/animal-welfare/

F. UTILITARIAN ARGUMENTS: HARMS TO HIGH-EMIGRATION COUNTRIES

http://openborders.info/brain-drain/

http://openborders.info/delay-political-reform/

IV. DETERMINING WHAT APPEARS TO WORK & MODERATE SOLUTIONS NEITHER SIDE WILL LIKE:

Although some writers on the Open Borders site advocate a radical "open borders" position, they also admit that moderately open borders (i.e. streamlined immigration with modest caps & vetting) is more attractive to many experts than the radical, completely open borders approach. They also addresses some "keyhole solutions" to alleviate many of the negative externalities from immigration. Note that "keyhole solutions" are essentially targeted interventions designed to minimize the type of "iatrogenic risk" we discussed last time that results from harsh "blanket enforcement" policies.

http://openborders.info/moderate-versus-radical-open-borders/

http://openborders.info/keyhole-solutions/

V. BROADER, SYSTEMIC PERSPECTIVE ON THE GOALS OF IMMIGRATION REFORM - INCREASING ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITIES, CIVIL LIBERTIES & HUMAN WELFARE:

The benefits to immigrants can also be created in their homeland through allowing US businesses to invest there & dropping trade barriers with those countries, improving the policies the IMF & World Bank use to guide development, and putting pressure on developing countries to end abuses of human rights & begin democratic reforms.
The potential benefits of high immigration that open borders advocates promise for the US labor market can also be had by providing incentives to increase the native birth rate, enacting educational reforms (which could increase domestic labor productivity), encouraging innovation which can lead to automation (which substitutes for human labor), clearing barriers to outsourcing (to tap into foreign labor), and allowing limited immigration from high-skill immigrants.

VI. SYSTEMIC RISKS FROM SHORT-TERM, HANDS-OFF APPROACH TO IMMIGRATION:

In our last discussion, we looked at how short-term, heavy enforcement solutions to gun control could lead to "iatrogenic risks" (harm caused by treating social problems with law enforcement) and "kurtosis risks" (a "pressure cooker" created by preventing mild social conflict in the short term, leading to a "Black Swan" catastrophe in the future). This definitely applies to the immigration situation as well, and closed border advocates should take heed of them.

However, a different set of systemic risks are presented by going to the other extreme and taking a laissez-faire attitude that allows unlimited immigration and focuses on short-term measures of economic & social progress. As opposed to the concerns expressed about immigration above, which mostly dealt with acute crises or chronic problems, there's also concerns about how high levels of immigration could cause a systemic shift in American society that could be difficult or impossible to reverse.

This section includes negative economic & cultural effects from excessive immigration, but I've broken it off from the utilitarian arguments above because I wanted to distinguish how these arguments tie into the idea that systemic changes are akin to the "kurtosis/tail risk" we discussed last time. These problems lay outside model's based on incremental changes and researchers that make standard assumptions based on those models may overlook them.

A. IMMIGRATION POLICY RATCHET EFFECT & IMMIGRATION CHAIN REACTIONS:

http://openborders.info/precautionary-principle/

http://openborders.info/swamped/

http://openborders.info/diaspora-dynamics/

Sam Harris has made this argument several times on is podcast: In an open borders world, we'd expect massive immigration from the Third World to the First World until conditions in the former were no better than the latter. Essentially, if condition in the Third World didn't improve much even as their citizens were emigrating en masse, we'd expect the wealthiest First World countries to gain so many new citizens that their GDP per capita and Human Development Index would decrease substantially. (18)

B. LONG-TERM ECONOMIC STAGNATION RISK ("HIGH LEVEL EQUILIBRIUM TRAP"):

http://openborders.info/kill-goose-golden-eggs/

http://openborders.info/cheap-labor-technological-slowdown/

C. "TRAGEDY OF THE (SOCIAL INSURANCE) COMMONS" AND THE NEW "IRON LAW OF WAGES" ARGUMENT:

http://openborders.info/contraction-of-welfare-state/

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_wages

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average_is_Over

D. COGNITIVE TRENDS, "SMART FRACTION THEORY" & "MARKET-DOMINANT MINORITIES" (IDIOCRACY OR GATTACA):

http://openborders.info/iq-deficit/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_and_the_Wealth_of_Nations

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_on_Fire_(book)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect#Possible_end_of_progression